mango

Microsoft today revealed new details on their updated Games Hub for Windows Phone Mango. Xbox LIVE is fast becoming the pervasive games and media platform for Microsoft's ecosystem, with recent announcements that Windows 8 will have Xbox LIVE built-in. Hence, the new Games Hub will now have front and center many of the features that were originally available only in the Xbox LIVE Extras app.

It was during the MIX 2011 developer conference back in April when Microsoft gave the first detailed look at its new Windows Phone Mango update. At the time, the company touted new enhancements in support for HTML 5 and CSS3 and did a side-by-side comparison with iOS and Android, showing that IE9 on its Windows Phone blew away the competition in speed. Well, now it looks like Apple is ahead again with the iOS 5.

Two big smartphone announcements this morning, and two considerable insights into the prospects of an ailing cellphone giant. Nokia's new N9 could, with its MeeGo OS, easily have been the Finns fiddling while Rome was burning; the technical previews of Windows Phone 7.1 Mango, meanwhile, could have shown up a platform desperately lagging behind its rivals iOS and Android. Make no mistake, today we've seen the biggest glimpse so far of Nokia's future.

It's been eight long months since we reviewed our first Windows Phone 7 handset. Microsoft's rebooted platform launched with a bang at the tail end of 2010, promising not only a new start from the Windows Mobile days of old, but a fresh interpretation of what a smartphone should be like. A tentative hit with reviewers but less so among consumers, however, Windows Phone's impetus fizzled out as new devices failed to appear. Now, Windows Phone 7.1 "Mango" is coming to fill in some of the gaps, tidy up some of the loose ends and - Microsoft hopes - make the platform a more realistic competitor to iOS and Android. Check out the SlashGear review after the cut.

Leaner, tighter-lipped and very much aware of what's at stake. Nokia may be a lot of things, but naive isn't one of them. With a share price gutted by dreary financial predictions, and a quarter or two before the first Windows Phone devices are expected to do anything to change that, right now the only headlines tend to be bad ones: redundancies, reductions and generally biding time. SlashGear met with Nokia's new UK team at what - though they were careful not to bill it as such - was in effect a corporate reboot, to talk lessons learned from Apple, the threat to HTC and why Symbian won't go quietly into the night.

We already know that Nokia has bet the smartphone farm on Windows Phone 7, and some analysts think that is a good bet. Some are predicting that over the next few years Windows Phone 7 will crawl its way to the second most popular OS in the mobile market behind Android, presumably pushing iOS to third. The first Nokia Windows smartphones will run Mango and the latest word from Nokia is that the handsets will hit Europe first.

Microsoft is ramping up both consumer and developer support for its Windows Phone platform in preparation for their Mango update. Earlier today, they kicked off new one-cent deals for HTC Windows Phones in hopes of boosting consumer adoption of their platform and now they're offering a new app migration tool for Android developers.

Nokia's fall from cellular grace, decision to abandon Symbian and contentious shift to Windows Phone is still a touchy topic, especially for loyal Nokia fans frustrated by how MeeGo was marginalized in favor of the Microsoft platform. Listen to CEO Stephen Elop and key members of the Nokia team, however, and it seems MeeGo was never near being the salvation the company needed. In a lengthy Bloomberg piece on the company and its new CEO, the stand-out message is one of speed: at its previous rate there would have been a mere three MeeGo devices by 2014, but now, in less than three months since announcing the Microsoft partnership, Elop has "got a working Windows Phone in my pocket now ... we're moving at a speed that's faster than Nokia has ever moved before."

Microsoft is hard at work on getting the Mango update to Windows Phone 7 ready for the prime time later this year. The company has been talking up a lot of the new partners that will be offering smartphones running Mango. Last week Microsoft announced that Acer, Fujitsu, and ZTE would all be producing Mango smartphones. We already know Nokia is onboard too. The specs of the Acer W4 Windows Phone have been unveiled.

Nokia has already frustrated recent Symbian device owners today, by releasing the Anna-toting E6 and X7 but not an upgrade for existing handsets to the newest version of the platform. Now the company is upsetting investors, with a warning that its Q2 2011 financial results will be worse than previously expected. Demand for existing handsets has slumped, leading Nokia to predict net sales "substantially below" the earlier estimate of €6.1bn to €6.6bn.

What appears to be a 12-megapixel HTC smartphone running Windows Phone has been caught in the wild, lending weight to rumors that the company is looking to high-resolution cameras to further differentiate its future handsets. Shared by arch-insider Eldar Murtazin, the unknown phone - which resembles an HTC Trophy - is shown set to take 12MP 4000 x 3000 images in the camera app.

Microsoft recently unveiled its Windows Phone 7.1 Mango update and revealed the manufacturers that will be on board to pump out the next-generation of Windows Phones. Noticeably not mentioned as much was Nokia, who has a unique relationship with Microsoft that may give them more privileges than the other phone makers. However, when exactly Nokia plans to actually exercise those privileges is still not certain, although we now hear that when they do, they intend to crank out a lot of phones and fast.